Maverick Carter

Bashing LeBron James the brand has become a national past time. Maverick Carter — James confidant and business manager — has taken almost as much incoming fire as LeBron the past year. Since the decision to take his talents south, LeBron’s popularity has plummeted and some marketing options have dried up. There are all sorts…

“The Decision,” the now-infamous telecast that featured LeBron telling the world he was “taking his talents to South Beach,” made LeBron one of the most hated athletes in America. But did LeBron really deserve the blame for what turned into an hour-long fiasco for his image? Earlier today Deadspin’s Emma Carmichael, drawing on an excerpt…

I don’t know about the rest of you, but when I was spending $9 million on a house I wanted to make sure it had a wine cellar and a place to park my yachts. Plural. Check and check. LeBron James new home in the Coconut Grove area has all that, according to the Miami…

After the Miami Heat beat the Atlanta Hawks for a fourth straight win Saturday, LeBron James and his best friend and manager Maverick Carter went out for dinner at Myles Chefetz’s Prime Italian in Miami. A regular Saturday night. Well, it would have been except that also in the restaurant were about 30 Cleveland Brown…

If you have the money to make a jewel encrusted pendant of your basketball jersey… well, maybe Biggie Smalls was right about money. LeBron James’ business manager Maverick Carter is now being sued by VaNeisha Robinson, who is charging false imprisonment, according to TMZ.com (via FanHouse). The fact that this is on TMZ next to…

Did race play a role in the backlash — both in the media and in the general public — to LeBron James’ decision to take his talents to South Beach? LeBron James and his business partner and close friend Maverick Carter both said yes in an interview on CNN Wednesday night (hat tip to Jason…

UPDATE: 3:48 pm: CNBC’s Darren Rovell got this comment from ESPN: ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz tells us why the LeBron Vegas story was pulled: “The story should have never been published. The draft was inadvertently put on the server before going through the usual editorial process. We are in the midst of looking into the…

You remember when we finally got through “The Decision” and we were so excited because we wouldn’t have to talk about LeBron for a while? Well, Chris Paul has come in and hijacked our summer away from us. Howard Beck of the New York Times, that fancy inkrag up New York way brings us news…

Larry Coon, the salary cap guru employed by ESPN (you are going to read a lot of him next summer when the lockout comes), made a great point this morning: Three years ago, Kobe Bryant went ballistic. He was frustrated by the Lakers roster, the inability to win, so Kobe demanded a trade. He ripped…

UPDATE 7/17 10:34 am: So maybe our innocent heroine is not so innocent. Vaneisha Robinson, the woman who said she bought the pendant at a garage sale four years ago, is now a suspect in the case for receiving stolen property. Her story always had one big question mark: Someone really sold a $10,000 pendant…

We don’t know. Nobody in the media knows. That won’t stop us from speculating. We’ll use a shred of information to concoct entire theories. We’ll guess. (Complain about that if you want, but those guesses get a lot of viewers — you like it so we keep doing it). But we don’t know what LeBron…

Remember talks of LeBron James going on a nationwide tour to be wined and dined by the teams and cities that wanted him? Yea, not so much. All meetings with teams will be at a neutral site, James’ right hand man Maverick Carter told ESPN’s Chris Broussard. “LeBron is not going on a tour,” Carter…

Virtually every player in the NBA seems to have a posse, his boys, his friends. They are the guys hanging around the player at clubs, the guys who do his driving and run his errands and are supposed to take care of life’s little annoyances. Sometimes, they even get real responsibility. But no inner circle…

LeBron James wants a lot of things. He wants to win. He wants a boatload of money to play basketball. He wants teammates that show up in the clutch. He wants some Finals MVP trophies to go with those regular season ones. He does not want to pick his new coach. That’s what longtime James…